Corporate Interests
by Blckdeath41
Summary: 3 years after the lighting of Mars Lighthouse, a cabal of powerhungry businessmen threaten the elemental balance of power in Weyard, and the adepts of Vale must set forth to safeguard the Golden Sun and the world from destruction.
1. Prologue

Corporate Interests

Legal Stuff: I don't own Golden Sun. If I did, I'd be rich.

This is my first fanfic. So if it's crappy then you know why.

Prologue

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The two duelists circled each other in the glade, watching each other intensely as they sought an opening in each other's defenses. Elemental power, pure manifestations of earth and fire energy, writhed sinuously around their slender bastard swords and hands, even reaching out into the space between them. Suddenly, one of the duelists, the one earth energy was emanating from, darted forward, his sword aimed for his opponents throat, but his opponent blocked the thrust well before it reached her and counterattacked with a downward slanting slash from upper left to right that the Venus adept dodged just in time to keep the psyenergy imbued sword from taking out his throat. The two adepts struck and counter struck, Venus and Mars adepts weaving in a deadly dance that astounded their audience, a group of 14 earth and fire elementals known as djinni. 

The Mars adept ducked and skittered to her right, her hands moving in a blur as she picked off her opponent's blows and tried to slip her own through his incredible defenses. Upper left down, lower right left, thrust, upper left down, and back and forth as they repeated the sequence over and over again. She enjoyed these sessions, the Mars adept thought, brilliant auburn hair flowing as she ducked and dodged to move herself into position to land a victorious blow. Suddenly, the Mars adept felt herself being wrenched off of her feet as her Venus aligned sparring partner slipped past her sword and tripped her up. Knowing she had lost, the Mars adept saw an opportunity to bring the match up to a draw, and took it.

Isaac grinned down at his defeated friend through the cheers of the thoroughly awed djinni, both Mars and Venus, saying, "Damn, Jenna, you must be really off your game today. I never beat you this easily before." The Venus adept stood over his fiery friend, a telekinetically dulled sword at her throat. Jenna, flat on the ground, tucked a loose strand of brilliant auburn hair behind her ear and smiled back. "Looks like you're a little off too, Isaac," Jenna tapped her own sword against the inside of her friend's thigh, where she had slipped it just as she fell. "Ouch," she smirked, "that would've hurt, I think. Better watch out closer next time." The two laughed, dispelled the protective enchantments they had placed on themselves and their equipment, and started the long walk back home.

The road between the dueling glade and New Vale was calm and peaceful, lined on both sides by leafy trees of all sorts. Isaac and Jenna walked side by side, bantering and laughing at each other as they enjoyed each other's company. It was, they thought, a truly beautiful day.

It was not to last.

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That be it. If anyone's reading this, please review. Constructive criticism is appreciated. Both, not either. 


	2. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I still don't own Golden Sun

Chapter 1

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No sooner had the pair passed through the main gate of New Vale and each laid a hand on the welcoming psyenergy pillar in the main square of the town did they hear the loud beats of a galloping horse on the road. A crowd quickly gathered, wondering who would be in such a hurry to reach the small and relatively peaceful town. Isaac saw several of his closest friends among the crowd; the red haired Mars adept Garet and his Mercury adept wife Mia, the Jupiter adepts Ivan and Sheba, and Jenna's brother, the Venus adept Felix. Piers had returned to Lemuria after the Mars Lighthouse had been lit and had immediately joined the Lemurian Navy. In his own words, "They practically begged me to join." 

"Hey Isaac," Garet said, "Looks like somebody wants to get here pretty badly. How far out is he?" Isaac knelt down and placed his hand on the ground, feeling the vibrations in the ground through his psyenergy. The Venus adept stood back up and remarked, "Duck."

Just as he spoke that word, a man on a horse leaped through the gate and landed mere feet from the assembled crowd. "Sanctuary! Sanctuary!" the man shouted at the top of his lungs. The rider turned to face the crowd of Valeans, and then collapsed in exhaustion. Almost immediately the crowd flooded over to surround the man, summoning healers over to make sure the rider was still alive. However, nobody expected it when Ivan suddenly reached the man and recognized him. "Bunza?!"

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Bunza slowly woke up much later. Groaning from a dull but throbbing pain, Bunza gathered his bearings and noticed that the people of Vale had taken him from the plaza where he had fallen and placed on a cot in a small, warm wooden house. Bunza tried to pull himself out of the bed, but stopped as a wave of nauseating pain rolled through his body.

"You're going to hurt yourself if you don't just lie down and rest," a voice told him. Bunza saw a young man with blond hair cut in a bowl shape standing over him, holding forward an open vial filled with a blue liquid. "Drink," Ivan said gently, and Bunza gratefully ingested the healing liquid, some of his wounds visually knitting. "Are you okay?" Ivan continued. "Yeah," Bunza nodded, "I'll be all right". Now that the man was visually improving, Isaac stepped forward and asked, "You were in a hurry riding to Vale. Why? Who was chasing you?"

"Lord Hammet sent me," Bunza began with a cough, "a business partner of his was conducting a business deal with a client when their caravan was ambushed. When they found him, the caravan was completely destroyed, the client was missing, and Lord Hammet's friend was found with an arrow in his gut and barely hanging on to life. The poor man told his rescuers soldiers from the Guild of the Illuminated were responsible for the attack. The client was an adept. After that, every merchant caravan doing business with adepts has been attacked in some way."

Bunza paused for breath as his hosts absorbed the information. The Guild of the Illuminated had emerged only two months after the release of the Golden Sun as a small network of rich families which had gotten their wealth through less than respectable ways, and then had quickly an immense amount of power throughout Weyard. The Guild also hired so many mercenary companies that its military power rivaled the armies like Kalay and Tolbi. With nobody knowing the actual intents of the Guild, that power scared people.

"Lord Hammet feels that the Guild is targeting and kidnapping adepts for some reason. Two days after I set out from Kalay, I was nearly ambushed by a small group of men in Guild uniforms. Evading them, I nearly rode into the camp of a large group of soldiers. They were heading this way. I've been riding night and day to reach this town after I saw that force."

Bunza broke off coughing heavily, and Mia, who had been watching farther away with the rest of the adepts, rushed forward, hands emitting the blue glow of her healing psyenergy. Isaac and Ivan turned back to their friends, who all had heard the conversation and fully understood the meaning of the information Bunza had given them.

"Okay," Isaac addressed his friends, "we should probably set up a watch. Get your weapons and meet here as soon as possible. We'll work in three hour shifts through the night. Understood?" The rest nodded. "Good, let's hop to it."

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It was well past midnight when the alarm bells started signaling an attack. Isaac jolted awake, throwing on his cloak and his weapons belt, with several elongated daggers, throwing knives, and his long sword, the Excalibur. Running out of the house, Isaac took the chance to watch the combat taking place between the Valeans and soldiers in the black masks and robes of the Guild.

The adepts were in a well used formation, a larger group holding the center of the line while one or two ensured that the flanks held. Isaac saw that Mia and Garet were holding the left flank, and holding it well, Garet slicing through their attackers with his burning long sword and psyenergy, while Mia watched his back with her own deadly water-based powers and a powerful mace. There were three kinds of bodies that littered the ground around them; burned Guild corpses, frozen corpses, and some showing both types of wounds.

Further on fought Felix, cutting down Guild soldiers with his Sol Blade and hundreds of psyenergy generated stone flechettes he shot from his hands. Above and behind him, Ivan and Sheba floated above the battle, raining lighting and bolts of plasma upon those soldiers unfortunate to be caught in the open. It wasn't necessary to say that the center of their line was secure.

Knowing that Felix and the Jupiter adepts did not need him, Isaac moved on to the remaining position. Jenna was fighting on the right flank alone, yet she seemed to be secure. Jenna fought with the double long weapon style she discovered and quickly mastered in Lemuria, a style best suited for her mentality of speed and power over stationary defense, and had insisted on teaching it to several of her like-minded friends, including Isaac. Signaling his presence, Isaac slipped beside his friend and touched his arm to the Mars adept's, assuring her of his support. The two had practiced this particular technique numerous times in the past, but this was the first time they had actually used it in battle.

The pair of adepts dashed forward into the crowd of Guild soldiers. Jenna lead the attack, bringing her weapons to bear on the closest Guildsman and bashing the man's scimitar up high and numbing his sword arm. Caught at a great disadvantage, the Guildsman was confused when Jenna then pivoted on her right foot and turned left. So confused that when the man brought his weapon back to strike his curiously retreating opponent, he never noticed Isaac's Excalibur plunge into a lung and jerk back out.

The man dropped to the ground, blood frothing from his torn lung. As one, the remaining Guildsmen took a step back, and then charged. Isaac and Jenna took the charge head on, blades flashing and weaving as they continued spinning using each other as a pivot. The pair fought in such a way that no Guild blade got close to scoring a hit on either adept, both covering each other with their blades in an impenetrable defense. Here, a scimitar angled towards Jenna's back was expertly turned aside by Excalibur, which then reversed direction to tear that soldier's throat out. There, a Guildsman moving in to hamstring Isaac found Jenna's Tisiphone's Edge being driven through his lower back, severing the man's spine. It hurt, but only for a moment.

The pair quickly fell into the rhythm of the battle, blades flashing and cutting swaths through the enemy lines. Isaac and Jenna fought in perfect harmony, each supplementing the other's strengths and covering the other's weaknesses. Whereas any competent fighter could easily slip past the defenses of a stationary enemy, the constantly moving adepts exposed no weakness that could be exploited. Those Guild soldiers who tried to died quickly. Those who didn't lived just a little longer.

Before long, the majority of twenty odd Guild soldiers that had attacked them were either dead or dying quickly. "Good exercise, eh?" Jenna said breathlessly. Before Isaac could respond, he spotted a glint of light in the shadows. Isaac took two hundredths of a second to recognize the glint as a crossbow, and less than a second more to realize that the weapon was aimed at his friend. Isaac immediately opened his mouth to cry out a warning as he cocked back his hand and threw the knife in it. Time seemed to crawl to a standstill as Isaac watched his thrown knife carve through the air mere millimeters away from the inbound crossbow bolt.

The weapons struck their respective targets at almost the same time. The knife cleaved into the Guildsman's heart, blasting him backward into a tree, but Isaac did not look or care. The quarrel struck the Mars adept in the chest, knocking her back a foot before she uttered a quiet "Oh" and collapsed. Isaac immediately turned in rage towards the few remaining Guild soldiers, who turned around and ran, but not fast enough, for Isaac raised a hand and with a forceful thought, _Briar!_ thorn-covered vines shot out of the ground and crushed each of the men, spilling their blood on the ground.

Isaac turned towards his fallen friend, cradling her head in his lap and pouring every ounce of strength he had left into the healing spells he cast on her. But it was no use, there was no response, and as Isaac blacked out the last thing he saw was the ground rushing up to meet him.


	3. Chapter 2

Corporate Interests

Chapter 2

_I still wish i owned Golden Sun 1 and 2, but i don't. Enough said._

_Evil Riggs is the first reviewer. Thanks, man. _

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"Don't worry, he's okay. He collapsed more from exhaustion than any wounds he suffered. He'll be alright." A calm, cool female voice said.

"That's good," a second voice, this one male, responded, "we need Isaac. You have to feel sorry for him. She's a friend of mine, but he was really close to her. Did you know…"

"He nearly killed himself pouring healing spells into her after she was shot." A third voice, also male. "I searched his mind, to ascertain the health of his psyche. His mind is unaffected, however, he cares for - "

"Quiet!" the first voice interrupted, "he's waking up!"

Isaac woke up with a splitting headache with the light of day shining directly into his eyes. Squinting, he managed to make out his friends standing around him, concern etched on their faces. Felix and the Great Healer of Vale were standing further back, around another bed where Jenna laid. Isaac was relieved to see that she was still breathing.

"It's good you see you're awake," Mia told him. "We managed to drive off the attackers but one of the villagers found you and Jenna collapsed. We checked you over while you were asleep. You're ok to stand, but I don't want you to be doing any hard activity for a while. Okay?"

Isaac nodded and pulled himself off of the cot, stumping over to his unconscious friend. Jenna stirred, and Mia and Piers, along with Felix, stepped forward and began to pour their healing psyenergy into her body. Isaac started towards the healers to add his own strength to the flow of energy, but Mia shook her head. He was not strong enough to expend so much energy yet.

Jenna awoke to a dull pain throbbing in every inch of her body. Blinking her blurry vision away, Jenna was bathed in pale blue and yellow light that she recognized by feel as healing psyenergy. When the light faded, Jenna looked up to see her friends surrounding her.

"Ugh," Jenna moaned, "what hit me?"

"A five millimeter wide crossbow bolt tipped with some variant of nightshade poison. I'm not sure which. Fortunately, Piers and I managed to purge most of the poison out of your system, so you'll be ok. You'll need to stay in bed for at least three weeks though. I'm glad that you're ok, Jen." Mia patted her friend's arm. The other adepts crowded around the female Mars adept, offering information and well wishes while Jenna's family watched on from a distance.

Finally, Isaac slipped through the crowd to his friend's side. Jenna was turned away from him, taking with Ivan. When the young Jupiter adept said his goodbyes, the Mars adept turned over to face her blue eyed friend.

"Hey," Jenna said weakly. "Hey," Isaac replied, "I – I'm glad you didn't get hurt too badly. I'm sorry tha - "

"Don't worry about it," Jenna cut him off, "you tried your hardest to block that quarrel coming in for me and you know it. Don't worry about it." Jenna patted her Venus adept friend on the arm. "I guess we'll just have to work on the technique more, eh?" The Mars adept grinned. Isaac smiled back and pulled a chair over to talk with his friend.

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Life in New Vale for the next few weeks went by uneventfully. The New Vale Militia, a trained group of volunteer citizen soldiers, patrolled the entrances and public places of the town, and what little damage had been inflicted in the attack by the Guild was repaired. Isaac, Felix, and the rest of the adepts maintained a loose watch over the safety of New Vale, but all six of them made time in their schedules to complete their own chores, as well visit Jenna, who was convalescing well in the town's infirmary.

"So, I heard that Felix and Sheba are getting together," Isaac told Jenna as he visited her one particularly nice Friday. "I guess he asked her out by the pond by the psyenergy stone. And Piers wrote from Lemuria. He's been placed in command of his own battlecruiser since we last saw him. Said something about patrolling southern Angara for pirates. He's doing pretty well for a supposed exile. I guess the Senate finally got its head out of the sand and stopped listening to Conservato."

"That's nice," the Mars adept replied. A few seconds passed by, then she glanced sideways at her friend and asked, "Are you ok though?"

Isaac knew what his friend meant by her question. Since they were children, Isaac and Jenna had been incredibly close friends and over the past year that friendship had been bordering on something closer. Isaac knew that he cared for his red-haired friend deeply, and he was certain that she felt the same way. And ever since that night when the forces of the Guild of the Illuminated struck their small town, Isaac had not been sleeping well at all, plagued with nightmares of the theft of the elemental stars by two Proxian soldiers three years past which culminated in Jenna's kidnapping.

"I… am just glad that you are still alive." Isaac replied truthfully, looking away. Jenna placed a hand on his forearm, catching his attention. "Hey," she said, "you know as well as I do that you couldn't have done anything that night. You tried all you could do to block that bolt. And that's all you could have possibly done. Don't worry about it."

"But…" Isaac stammered, "what if that soldier shot with better aim? Or what if Mia couldn't get to you fast enough and the poison killed you?"

Jenna responded by pulling herself up and kissing Isaac squarely on the lips. Isaac's mind went blank and heat coursed through him, and all his concerns and worries about what could have happened to his dear friend simply vanished as he stopped trying to think and simply… felt. Suddenly, Jenna broke away, a smile widening on her lips, and said softly, "The question is, does it matter now?" Isaac answered her question with a deep kiss of his own.

Several minutes later, Isaac was settled quite comfortably in an armchair beside Jenna's bed, the couple holding each other's hands lightly and basking in each other's presence. The two stayed together in silence for a good half an hour until Jenna broke the quiet. "Isaac?" Jenna asked, "Will you stay with me a bit?" Isaac smiled and replied, "Certainly." Isaac of Vale slept sitting beside his friend and lover that night. It was one of the best nights of sleep he ever had in a very long time.

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People say that money has the power to unlock all doors. The truth of this is incredible. One year after the lighting of the Mars Lighthouse, a conglomerate of incredibly wealthy corporations paid well over a billion coins to fund a magnificent citadel on a mountain in Northwestern Angara. The fortress was completely defensible with multi-layered walls and defensive positions, on a massive high ground, and garrisoned by the better part of five _thousand_ soldiers. Nothing conventional short of a full scale attack with heavy infantry, cavalry, and lots of artillery could bring that fortress down. So, when those corporations revealed themselves to be shadow fronts and proxies for the Guild of the Illuminated, the entire power structure of Weyard, as well as the builders themselves, marveled at their own immense stupidity.

The Guild didn't care. They just moved in, and the newly christened Citadel Victorious became the headquarters and base of operations for a council of rich, powerful men and women nobody knew all that much about.

The Inner Sanctum of Citadel Victorious was a massive, 2,000 foot long room ordained with some of the finest gold and silver laid artwork in the world, and a chamber reserved for the use of an elite group of people, Pasha Auritol, the Supreme Leader of the Guild, and a half dozen of his most trusted and skilled advisors, the Shining Council. In this chamber of the elite, the leadership of the Guild met to discuss the organization's wide-reaching military, political, and corporate actions. This meeting, however, was about something infinitely more important than those. Infinitely.

"Our attempts at acquisition of experimental subjects have been going well," said Duchess Sharlotta, the Councilwoman in charge of the Guild's clandestine operations, "We have detained over 30 adepts of varying power levels as of yet, and our efforts are continuing."

"Good," the Pasha replied, "And you, Bennet?"

Lord Bennet was the Guild lieutenant with power over the Guild's legions of employed and sometimes coerced scholars, the organization's Research department. "The experimentation is progressing nicely," he answered, "it seems that the Mercury adept designated Subject 3-1 is showing the greatest reaction towards the new equipment. A working prototype of your design should be active in at least a month. However, we will need some more test subjects."

"Sir," General Arkady, the head of the Guild military, began, "the expeditionary force we sent to neutralize the Adept's stronghold was repulsed. My generals request permission to send a larger force to destroy that town of our enemies."

"Agreed," the Pasha answered, "Have one of your Generals take a company of soldiers. Destroy Vale. And bring back some prisoners to make our researchers happy. We cannot allow for Vale to survive. Do you understand?"

"Yessir!" the General saluted crisply.

"Good," the Pasha replied, "Dismissed."

As his lieutenants dispersed, Pasha Auritol turned to his own thoughts. Power was great. Absolute power was even better. And soon, the great Pasha would have all the power in the world at his disposal.

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_For those 50 some people who actually took a look at this before deciding it was a waste of time, please read and review._

_ (Yes, I know that should've gone up there, not here. I'd really like some reviews though. Even ones telling me how badly this sucks.)  
_

_So, review, criticize without tearing my throat out, etc etc_

_Peace_


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